PREVIEW: "TACIT" - CONTEMPORARY WORKS BY JULIA RAE ANTONICK AND JONATHAN MEYER
2010-07-08 11:24:09 AM
By Sid Smith
Summer is the time of year for ease and relaxation, for simpler pleasures like picnics in the park and reading matter no deeper than your typical whodunit.
Against that grain, two decidedly serious dancers are teaming up for what promises to be gutsy, challenging, complex and thought-provoking. The press release describing Julia Rae Antonick and Khecari Dance Theatre artistic director Jonathan Meyer's joint project "Tacit" more than hints at this depth: "a series of parallel and overlapping vignettes which expose unspoken agreements through the exploration of duet dance forms and cultural conventions."
"It's definitely contemporary dance in terms of the movement vocabulary, not jazzy or balletic," Meyer says. "Much of it springs from contact improvisation. My background includes Capoeira, and Julia's includes Indonesian dance."
"For the last couple of years, in working together, we've been interested in following movement generation," Antonick puts it. "We really believe in a lot of dance, a lot of movement, a lot of kinetics. So we've been playing with a lot of raw movement, without a specific theme or topic or concept, which can seem fake." Earlier ventures at collaboration didn't even have names, labeled "Project No. 1," "Project No. 2," etc., instead.
But "Tacit" represents an evolution for the pair, and not just in boasting a genuine title. Even the mechanics of it illuminate the complexity of their approach. The duet is a fundamental construct, but this is not simply a program of duets performed by Meyer and Antonick. In fact, the ensemble here is a quartet. Meyer and Antonick are joined in the performances by Cara Sabin and Marc Macaranas.
"We present mostly different pairings of duets," Meyer says, "though there are some trios and unisons of all four of us. But we're interested in how the duet approach can lend itself to trios and duets. A lot of partnering elsewhere is more image based, more about line or form. Ours is high energy and tends to move upside down and three dimensionally. We're about following lines of momentum."
Unlike their earlier pieces, there are theatrical trappings here. Katrin Schnabl provides costumes that Meyer says "have a morphing quality, they change and shift." Joseph St. Charles is a kind of fifth member of the ensemble as composer-musician, performing at a table whose instruments include drums, kitchen pots, electronic toys, spoons, a nearby radiator and something Meyer describes as "a broken down harpsichord."
The project's title, "Tacit," reveals much about the content. "We found we were working with a lot of unspoken agreements that came out of partner dancing," Antonick explains. "There are all these things you just know as a partner, even with different kinds of partnering, whether contact or tango. There are certain things you do within your role that make the partnership function. We were interested in different situations and social arrangements that also have this unspoken agreement of what we'll do, of how we'll each behave. Of course, it gets into gender stuff, but we're interested in extending it to the theater audience, too. You bring unspoken agreements into the theater with you when you attend, what you agree to see and what you don't. Say there's an exit sign on a wall, and someone puts a blue gel over it. Then everyone's agreeing that it's not there. Here, we agree to be quiet. Here, we clap."
This involves a sly illusion that "Tacit" explores, a specific aspect of our willingness to suspend disbelief. "We're seeking to populate the space with ourselves and give the feel there are more people on stage than there actually are," Antonick says. "We keep appearing in different places to multiply ourselves, in a way, and we bring in the musician and even the stage hands as part of that."
Meyer, who studied gymnastics, draws on that background and capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian movement art, to inject "Tacit" with images well beyond those of traditional modern dance. "In this piece, there are a lot more inversions, a lot more upside-downs than you typically see, a lot more floor work," he says.
But this is not Cirque du Soleil or even a romp of gymnastic fluff.
"Our goal is very much not to be about entertainment dance," he adds. "Hopefully, it will be entertaining as an art experience. But we're very much approaching this as contemporary dance artists."
"Tacit" will be performed at 8:30 p.m. Thursday July 8, Friday July 9 and Saturday July 10 at Overdier Hall in the United Church of Rogers Park, 1545 W. Morse Av. For advance tickets: ww.brownpapertickets.com/event/113173. For more info: khecari.org.
